


all things go (all things grow)

by hissingmiseries



Series: liv & rob [3]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Car Accidents, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissingmiseries/pseuds/hissingmiseries
Summary: She likes that someone's there to look after Aaron, even if he doesn't do a great job of it sometimes. She tries too, but she does way worse than he ever could. And Robert's sincere in it; Liv catches him every now and then looking at Aaron like he's just hung the stars. 


  And she'd definitely worry about him if something happened to him.

Or, Robert's dying. He is, he's dying, and Liv doesn't know what to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for [bartsugsy](http://bartsugsy.tumblr.com), whom i have been promising this fic to for far too long.
> 
> so we all know how aaron would react if robert nearly died - badly - but with this being the liv&rob series (and my eternal love of their relationship), i needed to write the scene from her eyes. i think she'd be way more affected than the show, or she, would let on.
> 
> (this ended up way longer than i expected it to be.)
> 
> title is from _chicago_ by sufjan stevens.

"It weren't your fault, Liv," Noah says, tenderly. "It's not like you shoved him into the road."

He nuzzles into her side like a fussy dog and tightens his arms around her, hidden beneath a head full of golden hair. Tears fall in small circles onto the carpet, like rain.

"This is fucked," Liv cries. "This is so _fucked_."

 

-

 

Robert Sugden smells like faded cologne. Like the scent has flaked off beneath his clothes or someone's fingers, bar a few particles still clinging to the hollow of his throat. It fills the whole room when he's been in there long enough - some foreign muck in a small black box next to the toothpaste in the bathroom. Liv smells blackberries when he passes; not spicy but still present, like it's part of his skin, woven into the pores.

She takes it one day, steals a spritz. It's masculine enough to have an edge but fruity and soft enough in the centre to not have her smelling like steel; no, it's perfect, it suits her. She coats her wrist, the tips of her collarbone, the back of her neck for good measure. 

"Mornin'," her brother says when she stumbles downstairs for breakfast. Her bag bounces against her lower back, heavy with unfinished homework. "Toast?"

"Sure," she replies, slotting a piece between her teeth. It takes her a few seconds to notice Robert's absence as his smell is the thing she normally identifies him by first, and she's filled that slot; if not by his smell then by his pretentious newspaper on the kitchen table or his coffee in that mug she bought him which he grew weirdly attached to.

Neither are present, instead replaced by a general disorderliness - like a string fraying at the edges.

"No Robert?"

"He had an early start." Ah yes, now she remembers. The muffled alarm at five a.m. from the bedroom next door, shrieking with a vengeance.

It's Friday. Technically, she has school.

"D'you want a lift?" Aaron asks. His hair's free of gel, standing up in irritated curls. There's three sugars in his tea instead of his usual two.

"To the bus stop?"

He shrugs. "To school, if ya like."

"Nah, it's alright," she says, shaking her head. "I'll go with Gabs."

"Right, well, no wagging," he says, and despite whatever authoritarian tone is in his voice, there's a familial softness that's hers and hers alone and she plays on that. "Seriously, Liv, I mean it," he continues when she turns to go. "I'm sick of your form tutor callin' up all the time."

Liv pauses, annoyed at how transparent she truly is. Maybe that's just Aaron; he's telepathic, she decided that day when she and Gabby nicked fifty quid from Charity and blamed it on Noah and Aaron glared at them both with that look in his eyes, that angry look that made her insides curl. "Mr Dunn calls ya up about _anythin_ ', though."

Aaron makes a face. "Especially when it's you supergluin' your teachers to chairs."

"That were a stroke of genius," she argues, and Aaron just rolls his eyes.

"D'ya need money for lunch?" he asks, fishing a crumpled fiver from his pockets. Both of them are momentarily grateful for the lack of Robert just then - Liv can practically hear his sigh, feel the indiscriminate glance at them both over the table. 

"Cheers," she grins, grabbing it and doing a runner out the front door.

 

-

 

She meets Gabby at the bus stop. Her tie's loose and her hair's immaculate, frizz forced into a high bun that frames her face. It's nearly summer, so her freckles have begun to sprout. "Hiya," she says. "Are we going in today, or -"

"Yeah," Liv says, rolling her eyes, spelling out _Aaron_ in bold letters. "We can bail at lunch time, though."

Jacob joins them, as does Noah, an obnoxious blue hoodie replacing his school jumper. He smiles up at Liv from beneath fair eyelashes, squinting in the sun and Liv ruffles his hair, _hello_. It's like having a puppy beside her, or a little brother, but like - a little brother she can actually _stand_.

"I brought food," he announces from underneath her fingers. "Swiped 'em from the bar when Mum wasn't lookin'."

"Knew you were good for somethin'," Liv says, the corner of her mouth twisting up. 

The bus pulls up and they all pile on, find the four seats at the back that are so _theirs_ that they might as well stamp their names onto the patterned covers. Liv reveals the fiver and puts it to Gabby's tenner, Jacob's twelve, Noah's three. Thirty quid altogether. Enough for a trip into Leeds instead of fourth period; a welcome break from reality. Or at least from physics GCSE.

 

Leeds doesn't happen but the cricket green does.

It's a beautiful day, hot and dry. The drag of battered brown land is actually in use for once, with cricketers in white uniforms and grass stained knees cracking red balls left, right and centre. They're round the edges, congregating near the changing rooms, spread out across the grass, sitting on their jumpers. Other kids are present, enough that Liv comments how the school must be shitting themselves at how many students have bunked off this afternoon.

Noah wasn't lying about bringing food. They pass round a bottle of Coke and packets of cheese and onion crisps and one of those massive purple bars of Cadbury's that Liv has several times before devoured by herself. 

She passes the bottle to Jacob. It fizzes against the plastic, threatening to blow.

The back of her neck's turning red.

"You're burning," Jake comments, pointing at the patch of flesh.

Liv shrugs. "It's red hot."

"I'll get some aftersun from the shop for ya when we go back," he offers, smiling at her, and she smiles back, shielding her eyes from the sun.

She likes Jacob. They've had some dodgy times together; there was a period once when they roped him into playing with matches in Home Farm's barns and ended up setting the whole place alight, and they all had to run and jump a fence and Liv scraped all the skin from her knee because she was short and unagile back then and it was fucking awesome.

But despite David's relentless dislike towards them all for their "bad influences," she likes how Jacob doesn't change. He'll always be there, in the shop, behind the counter. Stacking magazines or slipping chocolate bars up his sleeve.

 

The cricket stumps clatter. The players cheer and high five and adjust their sunglasses.

Gabby blows smoke into the air. Things are bad sometimes and they're bad today; her phone keeps ringing, Laurel's name flashing up in blue letters enough times for her to turn it off and toss it aside into the long grass.

It's been eight months since Ashley, and Liv knows that Gabby's not coping.

Her arm falls across Gabby's skinny shoulders, and she feels her friend's mass curl into her, a hand falling onto her knee. "Thank you," Gabs says quietly, quiet enough for only Liv to hear.

Sometimes Liv imagines what it must be like to be Gabs; they've both lost their dads but Liv knows that losing a man who she barely knew and didn't deserve the tears on her cheeks is nowhere near watching the dad who brought you up crumble into dust in front of your eyes. The closest thing she has is losing Aaron. Aaron who loves her, who she's almost lost before. She remembers the way her stomach had tightened when he'd flatlined, and tries to imagine that feeling stretched over the years afterwards, never quite letting go, never quite untying.

She doesn't like thinking about it.

Jacob's the only stable one amongst them. He has David and Tracy and Leyla, rotating like a carousel. Gabby's dad is dead, Liv's mum is somewhere across the Irish sea and Noah has a mum who doesn't really care about him. 

It's like a shitty soap opera. 

 

Liv's phone buzzes.

_Three missed calls from Aaron. One missed call from Robert._

She turns it off.

 

-

 

When they get back to school, people are whispering. They're chattering and whispering and pointing. Not at them; at the car park, slowly filling as the clock ticks closer to three o'clock and the students pour out like they're running for freedom.

"What's goin' on?" Liv asks one of them.

"There's a fuckin' nice Porsche near the gate," they reply. "Jess and his mates wanna lift it."

 

Liv knows that Porsche. Slick and silver and glinting harshly in the sun, throwing back light into everyone's eyes - much like its owner. Attractive but too harsh to look at sometimes. 

"Isn't there one of them in the village?" Gabby asks, adjusting the knot of her jumper sleeves round her waist. 

"Yeah," Liv nods. "It's Robert's."

Nobody is surprised. He could be driving a fucking Ford Escort and somehow manage to make it look cool, still park it in front of the school gates so everyone can see it; luckily he has good taste in motors, so when he does park himself in front of everyone's view, a cluster of interested school kids gather.

 

"Oi," Robert says when he spots her, gesturing with a rolled up newspaper. He's dressed in all purple - or  _maroon_ , as he likes to correct her - looking absurdly overdressed against the sea of grey uniforms but managing to pull it off. That's something Liv's always envied of him. The air of confidence; the look on his face and the tone of his voice that tells people he can do what the fuck he likes. 

Noah's  _"he always dresses like a prick, dun'he?"_ is drowned out by the following torrent.

"Did you lot bunk off again?" he asks, eyes darting between the four of them.

"So what if we did?" Gabby says. Liv glares at her, warningly. Gab's always had a hell of a mouth on her; one that could get them all into shit, one which has done before.

"I'm not fussed about what you've done, Gabby," he says. "I'm not the one getting fined for you disappearing." His look drops back down to Liv. "You on the other hand -"

"Sixty quid. Ya can stretch to that," she argues, letting her eyes follow the length of the car as proof.

He rolls his eyes, unimpressed. "That's not the point."

"It were physics we skipped," she says. "There was a supply teacher anyway so it's not like we'd have gotten anythin' done."

Her friends nod in agreement. Robert looks between them all, exasperated before giving up. He's not cut out for this parenting lark; he's not as soft and pliable as Aaron is, who bends like rubber beneath his baby sister's hands, and he has zero patience and my god, Liv is the best patience test he's ever come across.

He loves her, don't get him wrong, but fucking hell.

  

"Are ya gonna tell Aaron?"

She's resorted to wide eyes, silent pleading because she doesn't want to disappoint Aaron. She loves Aaron, hates seeing the look on his face when she does something stupid. 

Robert loves him too. That much she knows. They both want the same thing: to keep Aaron happy, to keep him out of bother.

"No," he says with a sigh. "Not this time."

 

-

 

People notice her getting into the Porsche, being driven down the main road and into the countryside. She likes it for once, the eyes on her. 

Robert has a shit taste in music so Liv takes over the radio, Bluetoothing her phone as he glances down unsurely.

"What happened to good old CD's?" he comments. Liv glares at him. Sometimes she forgets that he's really fucking old.

 

They stop at a corner shop because Liv moans that she's hungry and Robert hasn't eaten since lunch either, so he stops his car opposite the shop window (so he can see it if someone tries to pry the door open with a coat hanger) and they cross the road and walk in, ringing the bell above the door as it opens. The shop assistant glances up, smiling falsely.

She picks a Mars off the shelf and Robert takes too long deciding on what sandwich to grab before eventually settling on ham and cheese and a bottle of Dr Pepper that smells almost as fruity as his cologne. She remembers the spray of it on the high points of her bones, on the red-raw back of her neck; she brings her wrist up to her nose. It's still there, pungent and fresh.

"Six quid for a sandwich and a drink," he says under his breath when the assistant isn't listening. "Scandalous."

Liv eyes the two-grand watch on his wrist and scoffs.

 

It's when they're walking back that it happens.

The car comes out of nowhere, literally; it appears from the abyss - or, from behind a corner - tearing out, breaching sixty. 

He shoves her forward. It catches his hip, rips the ground from beneath his feet. And then it ends; at quickly as it had come. It's very fast and very flashy and before Liv has a chance to breathe, Robert's sprawled out across the road, out cold against the tarmac, blood trickling from his left ear.

Liv feels herself start shaking and doesn't know how to stop.

 

-

 

The ambulance takes seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds to arrive, screaming blue. Five hundred and thirty-two heartbeats.  

She drops to her knees on the pavement, watching him. He hasn't moved; no flutter of his eyelashes or twitching, nothing to let her know that he's okay, that he's alive - that he's not about to waltz out of her life here and now, outside of a fucking off-license on Cottells Lane. 

 

"Are you family, love?" The paramedic asks, smiling down at her with urgency in his eyes.

Robert's on a stretcher, an oxygen mask strapped to his face, his hair matted with dark red _stuff_.

She swallows and nods.

"Come on then," he says, ushering her into the back of the ambulance. The doors close behind her, sounding permanent, and now she's staring at him, inches away.  _Wake up_ , she thinks. 

He's telepathic too, just like her brother; it's a trait, she's decided, of the now Sugden-Dingles. Sometimes she has it, in moments when the atmosphere's pulled taut after somebody's done something angry and heated and Liv's eyes flicker between hardened faces and she knows instantly who's said what and what's happened as a result. 

He can hear her. Of course he can. Just why the bastard isn't doing what she says is the part she can't figure out. Maybe he's just being stubborn; Robert likes doing that. He sure as hell picks his fucking moments too.

 

-

 

They're in the hospital waiting room and it's overwhelming blue. Everyone who Robert could call family is there, all bleary and tired. Vic's hair is falling loose from its tie and Diane's been drumming her fingers against the chair for so long it's nearly a hum. Aaron - well, Aaron's just being Aaron; red-eyed and shaky, glaring holes into the floor. 

"What happened exactly?" asks Chas, running a hand over her face. She has no makeup on; her eyes look small and distant, troubled.

"He got hit by a car," Liv says. "That's literally it."

"But _why_?" Chas persists, clearly fighting every urge to take Liv by the shoulders and shake her, shake the information out of her. "Was he not lookin' where he were goin'? He's not an idiot, he'd look -"

"Leave it, mum."

She looks up at her brother, nauseous when he doesn't look back. His face is very blotchy and pale aside from the inflammations around his eyes where the scratchy wool of his jumper has been pawing and wiping the tears away. "It just happened," she says. "It was too quick."

There must be a tremor to her voice because he immediately scoots over to her, envelops her in his arms. She melts into him; she loves him, loves the strength in his shoulders and the dark stain of his beard and the hole in his sleeve where his thumb slots through perfectly.

"It's alright," he says reassuringly. "You're alright."

"But Robert isn't."

"No, he's not." He has to choke the words out, like the hurt coming up his throat.

"He's goin' to be, though. Isn't he?"

There's a beat of silence when her brother exchanges a glance with his mum. "'Course he is."

She balls her fists in his terrible jumper and believes him.

(It's not like he has any reason to lie to her.)

 

He looks dead. There's no nice way of putting it; he looks dead, proper dead. Like he's taking up a hospital bed when he really should be on a slab.

Aaron must think the same thing because he tenses beside her, jaw clenching. Vic starts crying and Diane pales and Chas lets out a shaky breath and Liv's grateful for the steady beep of the heart monitor because at least there's one normal heartbeat in the room. Hers is going like helicopter blades behind her ribs, pressing against them, hurting. 

Robert must be hurting too, she realises. Even with all the morphine they're pushing through his system. 

"Did it hurt when you were like that?" she asks Aaron quietly.

"No," he says, looking down at her with dark eyes full of kindness and pain. "He's - he's fine."

 

-

 

Robert moved in with them like, a few months after Liv did, something which she orchestrated and something she's very proud of to this day. She doesn't even remember what they were arguing about - fuck knows with them two, there's always some weird drama between them and Liv picked up very quickly that it was almost always Robert's fault. Apparently he dives into things head-first without giving two thoughts about anybody else, which Liv hates; she also relates pretty hardcore to it and that bugs her too.

They have bits in common. Not the way she and Aaron do - round face and ability to pick locks and all that - but she's eavesdropped enough conversations to know that Robert knows what being unwanted feels like.

He's not a Dingle, though. Well, kind of. He's  _half_ a Dingle; he'd been unwilling to give up his surname (some sort of legacy thing) and Aaron had only just achieved Official Dingle Status and they'd met a happy middle and birthed a new surname, added a whole new branch to the family tree and she's the first new bud. The Dingle-Sugdens, bonded by a hyphen.

Robert's alright. He makes really good tea and his cars are flash and there's a thing about the way he stands that makes him look like he could take on the world and come out the other side wearing a smirk, not a hair on his head out of place. He's had experience in pretty much every corner of life, even the darkest and most cobwebbed, and worked every job and is the reason she's predicted a B for her English GCSE. He's got spiky blonde hair and skin that tans after three minutes in the sun and he has this super strong cologne that he wears so often it's a permanent layer of his skin. Blackberries; he always smells like blackberries. He leaves it on his coats and on the sofa, on the right side of his and Aaron's bed. He's alright.

 

She likes that someone's there to look after Aaron, even if he doesn't do a great job of it sometimes. She tries too, but she does way worse than he ever could. And Robert's sincere in it; Liv catches him every now and then looking at Aaron like he's just hung the stars. 

And she'd definitely worry about him if something happened to him.

Mostly because it would probably be him doing something stupid, either for his own gain or to protect someone dear.

 

She never expected it to be something as menial as a joyridden fucking Škoda.

 

-

 

"Who joyrides a  _Škoda_?" Gabby says when they're all in the woods behind Home Farm. It's dark, the moon is up. Jacob's working on setting up a fire and if Noah had remembered to nick the tent from the upstairs cupboard, they all could be tucked up in the warm together for the night. Instead they all have to split up and head home, back to their own separate lives. Liv hates it. She likes it with just her friends, just them and a fire and stolen bottles.

"I know, right?" Noah says. "If you're gonna joyride something, you choose an Aston Martin. Or a Ferrari, or something."

"Škodas are family cars," Jacob says. Noah has his head on Jacob's shoulder, blindingly pale against his dark skin. "I didn't know they could even reach sixty."

The fire catches, glows orange with the help of their lighters combined. 

Liv sits on the bed of damp leaves and stays quiet, staring into the flames, thinking.

She went camping with Robert once. Both Robert and her brother; they'd pitched a huge tent in the middle of a field somewhere and if it wasn't for Robert's sensible head, they'd have gone all Bear Grylls, foraging for food and berries and such. Aaron got all carried away and broke his phone - literally dropped it off the edge of a cliff - and Robert had just rolled his eyes and shook his head, unsurprised and irritated but fond. 

 

Noah and Gabby disappear into the forest to get more firewood. Their playful insults carry through the air like wind.

"Liv," Jacob begins, feeding the flames with twigs. 

"'m alright, Jake," she says, slow and careful. 

Jacob looks up at her, fire reflecting in his blue eyes. There's purple circles underneath them, tired ones. "Y'know we're not going anywhere. Me and Gabs and Noah."

Liv smiles. "I know."

"Robert'll be okay," he says. "I mean, he got shot and he was fine. That's hardcore."

She shifts a little; she can't decide what must have hurt him more. A bullet through the chest or being thrown against someone's bonnet. "You think?"

Jacob offers her a little reassuring smile and pokes at the flames until they cough. "Of course."

An  _I'd know_ latches itself onto the end; sometimes Liv forgets about David, about all he went through, but then she remembers the day that Jacob fell apart in Gabby's arms when they all bunked third lesson, when they were sat behind the bike shed, smoking and his shoulders just went. He'd cried for what felt like hours and Gab had to wear her coat all day to hide the wet stain on her shoulder.

"They'll fix him," he continues and she nods. They fixed her brother and he'd died, died right in front of her. 

 

-

 

Once, Liv was left stuck at home, babysitting Victoria's kid because Aaron was on a call out and Rob couldn't escape his meeting. Baby Elizabeth could almost toddle, stumbling around the room like a drunkard, grabbing at the sofa with her little hands for balance.

She'd started howling and Liv tried, she actually _tried_ to get her to shut up. It took ages, took every toy being thrust into her face and every annoying baby channel being played on the telly until Liv was on the verge of going insane with the fucking Cbeebies jingle in her ears.

Robert walked in just as little Lizzy had succumbed, and Liv must have looked knackered (she sure as hell felt it) because Robert had just sighed, looked at her with big sympathetic eyes and hugged her.

"I'm sorry," he said, into her hair. "Thank you for looking after her."

"It's okay," she replied. 

And it was - she didn't really remember the blur of the last few hours but it was okay. Robert was stable, she realised. He could always bring things back down to earth.

 

-

 

He looks sallow and languid against the hospital sheets, tubes sprouting like tree roots from his chest and his head. The doctors tell her that despite how lucky he is, there's swelling on his brain and it needs to be dealt with as quick as possible. Liv doesn't see how he's lucky at all.

She starts bringing him things; just to keep him company, because Chas is refusing to let Aaron be there twenty-four-seven like Liv knows he would be if he didn't have a life to live, or a scrapyard to run. 

 

She brings him oranges one day. She doesn't know why - it's not like he can fucking eat them - but she remembers Chas bringing her brother oranges when he was in this position, and Robert making her drink orange juice by the gallon when she fell ill that one time.

(Jacob let her have them for free. "Just take 'em," he'd said, thrusting the bag into her hand. "We get new ones in every day. Dad won't miss 'em."

Liv had squeezed his hand in silent thanks. _He's always there_ , she thinks, _he'll always be there_.)

"Here ya go," she says to the body, nestling the paper bag against the curve of his elbow. "So ya don't get scurvy."

She catches the bus back to school for last lesson and when she returns, the bag has gone, swooped up by one of the nurses.

 

She brings him CDs, since he always bloody complains about technology pushing forward without him. 

The keys to that Porsche hang from the rack next to the back door and she pockets them. The car's stationary in the car park round the back of the pub, not looking as bright as it normally does despite the fierce summer sun above it. She unlocks it and dives into the CD case, pulls out the ones with the prettiest covers.

Apparently he really likes some group called Fleetwood Mac; he has all of their albums, live editions and deluxe editions and the rest. She takes them, along with a few  _Now That's What I Call Music_ 's and driving anthem playlists. There's even shitty bubblegum pop that she wouldn't be seen dead listening to.

There's a television in his room but it doesn't have a disk drive and it's turned off, anyway. It's not like he can watch it.

 

She brings him balloons. Cheap foil ones from Clintons with _Get well soon!_ printed across them.

It's risky but she pops one with her nail, the bang making her flinch even though she knows that it's coming. 

Robert doesn't react, not even for a split second. Maybe his heartbeat speeds up. Liv can't tell if she imagines it or not.

 

-

 

**liv flaherty (5:47pm):** _gabby i need you._

**gabby thomas (5:47pm):** _are you okay?_

**liv flaherty (5:48pm):** _no._

 

"I begged him to wake up today," Liv says, quietly. "He didn't blink."

Gabby sighs, the water of the stream lapping at her feet. There's fish in the creek, darting around her ankles. "How long has it been now?"

"Two weeks." It feels like it's been years. "He looks terrible."

"He got hit by a car. He's not gonna look great."

Gabby says everything so bluntly, so matter-of-factly like she knows how unhelpful buttered comments are. They're necessary, the  _he'll wake up soon_ 's and the  _it's all going to be okay_ 's but only when the time is right - when she's crying into the pleats of her school skirt and she'll take anything she can get.

Liv tugs at her bottom lip, feels her chest tighten like a vice. "What if he doesn't wake up?"

"They'll unplug him if he takes too long."

That doesn't help.

She feels her eyes well up and drip down her cheeks and Gabby's stunned because Liv hasn't cried in like, months. Nowadays it's all she seems to do.

"I hate him," she says, barely above a whisper. "I hate this. I hate all of this."

Gabby holds her arms up and Liv twists into them, holds on as she sobs, curses the day she ever met Robert bastard Sugden.

Her heart hurts; that same hurt she gets when she sees her brother cry, or when her mum calls all the way from Dublin. That hurt of loss. Of change. Of knowing that things were once all well and good.

 

-

 

Gabs sneaks back to the house with her, shimmying up at the drainpipe with expertise and months of practice. They're super careful as they climb in; her floorboards creak with age and pressure, fond of betraying her at any moment.

Liv crawls into bed and Gabby tucks her in, holds her for ten minutes in silence then leaves, both of them tired and cried out.

She turns over and over again, verging on sleep but never succumbing; Robert's absence is everywhere. His light step isn't on the landing and he's not moaning at Aaron for watching reruns of Top Gear and he's not spending far too long in the shower every night, steaming up the whole damn house.

She sits up and slips out the door, down the stairs.

"Aaron?"

Her brother's slumped on the couch, noncommittally flicking through the telly guide. He looks sad, crushingly sad and if Liv feels the way she does about Robert in hospital then she can't even begin to imagine how he must be feeling right now. "Liv?"

"Robert loves ya," she says. "Ya do know that, right?"

He frowns at her. "What're you on about?"

Liv sighs, bites her bottom lip. She wonders how often her brother and his husband tell each other that; Aaron's told her so many times it's almost carved onto his tongue but whether the words are as common to Robert's ears is a mystery to her. She hopes they are. She wants Robert to know. If it's the last thing he knows whilst he's in that bed, hooked up to all those machines then it's okay. It's a good last thing to know. Like, if Liv dies tomorrow, if she died right here on the spot, she'd have enough questions for days - about her dad, her brother, her mum - but she'd know that every time she curls into Aaron's arms and he tells her her loves her into her head, he means it.

"He loves ya," she repeats. "He really does."

"Oh, Liv," he says, gently, in that voice he saves for her. "Liv, c'mere."

She folds herself into the crook of his arm and buries her face into his jumper. "What if he dies?"

"He won't," is his shaky reply. 

"I know," she says. "But what if he does?"

Aaron kisses the top of her head, tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Then we deal with it."

That scares her; she knows how Aaron deals with things. "I went to visit him today," she says. "I - told him about everythin' that's happenin'. About Scrappy gettin' loose and nickin' your client's tie. And how I got a B on that English test."

He smiles. "He'd be proud of ya."

"He didn't move or anythin' but he heard me. I'm sure he did." She closes her eyes and opens them again, opens them to see Aaron's welling up and god, she's seen that enough for a lifetime. 

He puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her back in, more for his own benefit than for hers; she feels him shake and heave against her body and her grip tightens, tight enough to probably leave marks. 

Then he pulls away, making a face. "Are you wearin' his poof spray?"

_Poof spray._ Aaron's oh-so-charming name for that blackberry cologne, the one that Liv doused her pillow in until it grew damp. She nods, padding at her eyes, and Aaron just shakes his head with a sigh and a crooked smile.

"Suits ya," he says. "Just don't tell him. It's bloody expensive stuff."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://hissing-miseries.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi!


End file.
